Data Center Fabric Design Overview and Validated Topology

Reference Design Topologies

We are using two topologies in this reference design—a centrally-routed bridging data center and an edge-routed bridging data center.

• Figure 1 shows the centrally-routed bridging topology.

  Figure 1: Centrally-Routed Bridging Data Center

• Figure 2 shows the edge-routed bridging topology.

  Figure 2: Edge-Routed Bridging Data Center

The Contrail-based servers (Contrail Command, controller, compute, and CSN) help to discover the data center network, create role-based device configurations (such as spine and leaf configurations), push them to the fabric devices, associate the servers and virtual machines with the network, provide switching and routing services, and coordinate with Contrail Insights (formerly known as AppFormix) to monitor and maintain the network. In summary, the components work together to simplify the onboarding, provisioning, operation, and maintenance of your data center network.

Software Summary

Table 1 summarizes the software components that we used in this reference design.